Monday, March 29, 2004

"Thanks for Calling New Jersey - This is Irving...Patel"

Attention John Kerry - we have an issue on aisle three...

I think I've found a theme for my time on this blog - continue hammering on the jobs and "offshoring" issues. From the Philadelphia Inquirer today, there's a New Jersey State Legislator who took up the mantle long before anyone else. She's looking like quite the genius these days.
She has appeared on Lou Dobbs' CNN program. A Japanese television station sent a camera crew to her Senate office in a modest neighborhood in Ewing, just outside Trenton, to record a segment for Japan's equivalent of 60 Minutes.

Dozens of newspapers, magazines, and online news sites have called for comment on what began as an economic ripple and has grown into a tidal wave of controversy: U.S. companies outsourcing tens of thousands of service jobs to India and other low-wage countries.

"I have never seen an issue generate this amount of energy," said Sen. Shirley Turner (D., Mercer), the surprising spokeswoman for thousands of dislocated workers. "The anger is more than I ever dreamed... . There does not seem to be any end to it."

Two years ago, Turner - whose district includes Trenton, Ewing, Lawrenceville, Hopewell, Pennington and Princeton - proposed what she considered "no-brainer" legislation: Stop companies with state contracts for call centers, computer coding, and other service work from sending jobs to countries with lower wages.

The anti-outsourcing proposal was one of the first of its kind in the United States, and it passed the state Senate before dying in the Assembly. Turner came up with the idea after hearing of New Jersey welfare recipients being routed to a call center in India where callers were given fictitious American names...As usual, there's nothing here that we "early adopters" don't understand. Poll after poll tell the Kerry campaign that this is where they should be hanging their hats. Lest Mr. Kerry's camp forget, this single issue is the issue that lit John Edwards brief flame.

Richard Clarke can carry the water on issues regarding the war on terror and Iraq. Focus on the wallet.